National Institute for Health and Care Research

Measure

Černis Felt Sense of Anomaly Scale – Short Form (ČEFSA-14)

Age range 13 — 65
Completion time 5 Minutes
Respondent Self Report
Problem areas
Other Trauma Unusual Experiences

Overview

The Černis Felt Sense of Anomaly Scale – Short Form (ČEFSA-14) is a 14-item self-report measure of Felt Sense of Anomaly (FSA)-type dissociation in adolescents and adults. FSA-dissociation describes experiences characterised by an unexpected sense of strangeness, unreality, unfamiliarity, automaticity, disconnection or absence relating to the self, body, emotions, surroundings, behaviour or perception. The measure is suitable for clinical and non-clinical populations and can be used to identify and explore the severity of these dissociative experiences. FSA-dissociation overlaps substantially with depersonalisation/derealisation, but the authors conceptualise the constructs as highly related rather than identical.

Scoring & Interpretation

The ČEFSA-14 is a shortened version of the original 35-item Černis Felt Sense of Anomaly Scale (ČEFSA) developed by Černis et al. (2021). The original ČEFSA contains seven domains: 1. Anomalous Experience of the Self 2. Anomalous Experience of the Body 3. Anomalous Experience of Emotion 4. Altered Sense of Familiarity 5. Altered Sense of Connection 6. Altered Sense of Agency 7. Altered Sense of Reality. The ČEFSA-14 retains two items from each of these seven domains, thereby preserving the phenomenological breadth of the original scale while substantially reducing administration burden. The ČEFSA-14 contains 14 items. Respondents rate how frequently they have experienced each phenomenon during the previous two weeks using a five-point scale: 0 = Never; 1 = Rarely; 2 = Sometimes; 3 = Often; 4 = Always. The 14 items are summed to produce a total score ranging from 0–56. Higher scores indicate greater FSA-type dissociation. The IRT analysis strongly supported calculation of a total score. The following interpretive ranges were established: Average = 0–28; Elevated = 29–38; Moderately severe= 39–48; Severe = 49–56. The authors state that these ranges are not clinical cut-offs. They are preliminary interpretive ranges and that clinical judgement should be used when interpreting scores. The authors caution that the seven individual domains have not been validated for separate subscale scoring in the short form. Where detailed interpretation of the seven dimensions is required in an adult respondent, the original 35-item ČEFSA is recommended.

Psychometric Properties

Internal Consistency

The ČEFSA-14 demonstrated excellent internal consistency: Cronbach's α = .92. The original 35-item ČEFSA also demonstrated very high internal consistency (α = .98) in the participant group used for the 2024 study.

Test-Retest Reliability

Not reported specifically for the ČEFSA-14.

Factor Structure

The ČEFSA-14 retains the conceptual seven-factor structure of the original ČEFSA, with two items representing each FSA domain and demonstrated excellent model fit in both development and validation samples. A second-order IRT model also demonstrated good fit and supported calculation of an overall FSA-dissociation score.

Validity

The 2024 study primarily establishes structural validity, age validity and measurement invariance of the ČEFSA-14 The original 35-item ČEFSA demonstrated strong convergent validity with the Dissociative Experiences Scale-II (DES-II): r = .802, p < .001. The ČEFSA-14 was derived from items shown to operate consistently across age, gender and clinical status and retained excellent model fit in an independent validation half-sample. The short form also correlated extremely strongly with the general FSA factor derived from IRT: r = .978.

Measurement Invariance

The researchers explicitly investigated whether items measured the same underlying construct according to: Age; Gender and Clinical status. For age, Local Structural Equation Modelling was used rather than dividing participants into arbitrary age groups. This allowed measurement properties to be examined continuously across the age range. The retained items demonstrated strong/scalar invariance across age. Scalar invariance was also supported across: Gender: male versus female and Clinical status: psychosis versus non-clinical/general-population respondents. The final ČEFSA-14 itself also demonstrated scalar measurement invariance.

Access

The ČEFSA-14 article is published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence, permitting unrestricted reuse, distribution and reproduction provided the original work is appropriately cited.

The authors have also established an Open Science Framework (OSF) page to provide the most up-to-date information about the ČEFSA, including updates to scoring guidance and translations.


http://ČEFSA Open Science Framework resource

Citation

Original Reference

Černis, E., Loe, B. S., Lofthouse, K., Waite, P., Molodynski, A., Ehlers, A., & Freeman, D. (2024). Measuring dissociation across adolescence and adulthood: Developing the short-form Černis Felt Sense of Anomaly scale (ČEFSA-14). Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 52(2), 163–177. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352465823000498.

References

Original Reference – Parent 35-item ČEFSA Černis, E., Beierl, E., Molodynski, A., Ehlers, A., & Freeman, D. (2021). A new perspective and assessment measure for common dissociative experiences: ‘Felt Sense of Anomaly’. PLOS ONE, 16, e0247037. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247037.

Other Relevant References Lofthouse, M. K., Waite, P., & Černis, E. (2023). Developing an understanding of the relationship between anxiety and dissociation in adolescence. Psychiatry Research, 324, 115219. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115219.

Černis, E., Molodynski, A., Ehlers, A., & Freeman, D. (2022). Dissociation in patients with non-affective psychosis: Prevalence, symptom associations, and maintenance factors. Schizophrenia Research, 239, 11–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2021.11.008.

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